1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates generally to the field of information handling systems. More specifically, but without limitation, the present disclosure relates to booting diskless clients within information handling systems.
2. Background Information
As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is an information handling system. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for such systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
One example of an IHS is a diskless system which may allow companies to reduce storage cost, maintenance cost, and potentially solve the majority of manageability issues associated with traditional personal computers (PCs). A diskless system may have a server, a network, and one or more diskless clients or diskless computers. Furthermore, each diskless client or diskless computer operates without an attached hard drive for storage. In place of a local hard drive, each diskless client may use a network drive for storage or the like. For example, one or more diskless clients may retrieve boot data, programs and/or applications stored on a network drive. Such a network drive may often be referred to as a virtual disk. A diskless client is sometimes referred to as a diskless computer or PC, a network computer, a thin client, diskless node, or a hybrid client.
A boot storm or network storm may occur when several diskless computers in the system attempt to boot from a network drive, thereby creating high network traffic. The high network demand causes network congestion and may cause a server to be overloaded. For example, a boot storm can occur during the morning shift when employees are arriving at the same time and booting up their respective diskless computers. Also, a boot storm may occur after a power outage when a large number of systems are attempting to re-boot. An employee's inability to boot a diskless computer during a boot storm may result in significant down time and loss in productivity.
Providing multicast boot streaming to diskless clients may prevent or reduce the occurrence of boot storms. In essence, any boot data would be multicasted through the network to diskless clients. By multicasting the data, network bandwidth demands during a boot storm may be reduced.
Boot images may also be cached at network devices as a means to prevent or reduce the occurrence of boot storms. When a boot storm occurs, the diskless computers would download from the network devices rather than from a server. Both methods previously mentioned may reduce network demand and reduce the potential risk of a boot storm. However, the proposed methods may still utilize significant network bandwidth to transmit boot data, thereby leaving open the possibility of an occurrence of a boot storm.
Thus a need remains for an improved diskless system that further reduces or eliminates network access during booting, and reduces network access during normal operation. Further, the improved diskless system may maintain and update cached boot images in the diskless computers when network congestion is low to reduce the potential for future boot storms. Additionally, the boot image cached by each diskless computer may be verified as an up-to-date boot image before it is used to boot the diskless computer.